SAM SIMS: my friend

 

The boys: mostly Caltech freshmen

 Probably Christmas time, 1951

 Sam is the one in the middle, with the red shirt.

 The house is Rancho Sims, in west Indio, CA

 It gave way to I 10  Auto World

 Not exactly progress, in my estimation.

 

You will remember Sam; he was featured in my blog “Why I am not a Biochemist”, published 6/29/12..  Well, he has just died – of something called “soft tissue sarcoma” – cancer, in other words.  He is said to have been his usual cheerful, uncomplaining, appreciative self to the end.  I posted the following on his funeral home’s web page:

I butted heads with Sam in 1949, 50 and 51, playing high school football.  I wrestled with him after dinner nearly every night at Cal Tech.  I visited him in Austin when he was at the U. Texas and I was in the army.  He was the best man at my first wedding.  We hung out together when we both were graduate students at Stanford.  Then I became a college professor on the west coast, while Sam settled on the east coast as a mining geologist.  I did visit  him once; he took me down an abandoned iron mine in Pennsylvania & scared the bejeebers out of me.  Then, for more than 30 years I never saw him.  And now he is gone, leaving behind what sounds like a wonderful family and a good life.  Thirty years notwithstanding, I consider Samuel J. Sims my best friend.     My heart goes out to Myrna and to all her and Sam’s family, none of whom have I ever met.    And in a way it goes out to me, too I had hoped to see Sam in the Southern California desert country where we both grew up.  Who knows, we might even have wrestled a little.  Good life, Sims: too bad you couldn’t hang around a lot longer. 

That makes four people important to me that cancer has taken away in the last few years:  Bob Speed, with whom I worked on many research projects, Richard Levin, my good friend and golf mentor, Linda, my much  adored wife, and now Sam.  Yes, you will say: when you get old your friends and family begin to die, and many of them die of cancer.  That is true, but is hardly a consolation.  More than ever I’m going to use my time, energy and resources to further cancer research.  I only wish I were smart enough and young enough to do a better job.